schoolinfosystem.org
Chris Rickert: Despite the generally positive overall picture, the foundation also notes that for six of the 15 measures for which data on race are available, “Wisconsin’s racial disparities are some of the largest in the country.” Those measures are: For the first three measures, the gap between Black and white children was the largest […]
DT Sheffler: My foregoing comments might seem to strike a note of hopelessness, but nothing could be further from the truth. I am full of optimism. I see signs of intellectual renewal popping up all around me like saplings from the ashes of some great forest fire. In time, I hope — though I dare […]
Jill Tucker: San Francisco school officials killed plans Wednesday to test out alternative ways to grade some high school students after politicians and parents panned the proposal in the wake of misinformation about it. An estimated 70 teachers in 14 high schools — about 10% of the educators in grades nine to 12 — were […]
Will Flanders Last yr, DPI met behind closed doors to lower the standards for the Forward Exam. Now, they will apparently do the same thing for the state report card. We need transparency in these meetings. Why are these standard settings that effect all WI families held behind closed doors? —— Did taxpayer funded Wisconsin […]
David Margulies Could it be that the nation’s large fraction of students lacking math proficiency is caused by significant numbers of students not having their multiplication tables memorized? In a California K-12 district with 15% of students proficient in math, according to state testing, only about 25% of fourth graders were found to have their multiplication facts memorized at the grade’s […]
Samantha Smylie The Illinois State Board of Education agreed Wednesday to move ahead with a process to change the state’s testing system, though the exact details still are being worked out. That process will include creating new “cut scores,” or the lowest score needed for a student to be sorted into broad categories of achievement […]
Mike Dowd But if you thought that was an honest measure of how many kids are passing, I have bad news. High-school grading policies have become so corrupt, class credits have become almost meaningless. In recent years, the Department of Education and many individual schools, have adopted “equity grading” practices intended to benefit disadvantaged students. But […]
Marc Eisen: “Those communities are still building single-family homes in places where people can develop generational wealth, which they can’t do when they’re renting. That’s my biggest concernquite frankly. Apartments don’t build generational wealth.” That’s one big reason Bauman thinks the economic inequality gap “hasn’t improved one bit” in the Madison area. The Rev. Alex Gee’s “Justified Anger” essay is a powerful document for exploring […]
Will Flanders Last year, (taxpayer funded Wisconsin) DPI changed Forward Exam standards-lowering the bar for proficiency in WI. Curiously after the election, DPI released data that “unrigs” the results to show what trends would have been. We put that data into district-by-district graph. 🧵 —- 14% reading proficiency in Beloit on the Forward Exam turned […]
Will Flanders DPI still claims they didn’t lower the standards, but this data release proves that to be a lie. It’s time we stopped allowing DPI to lie to us on the continuing failures of our public schools. —— Quinton Klabon: DPI uploaded scores in the least usable way possible, so I did it for […]
San Francisco Chronicle: But for an even bleaker example of how state leaders are failing to rise to the urgency of the moment, Californians should consider the response to AB1121 from Assembly Member Blanca Rubio, D-Baldwin Park (Los Angeles County). The seemingly uncontroversial bill would require California teachers in transitional kindergarten through fifth grade to be trained in […]
Andrew Waugh The government says it’s going to lower provincial assessment targets in New Brunswick schools because it deflates everyone involved when they aren’t hit. Article content The current target is for 90 per cent of students to “achieve appropriate or higher levels on provincial language, mathematical and scientific literacies on provincial assessments at the […]
Limited background amidst Wisconsin (and Madison’s) long term, disastrous reading results: Did taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Underly Juice Test Scores for Reelection? notes and links on Incumbent DPI Superintendent Jill Underly (back story). Underly supports eliminating our one elementary teacher content knowledge requirement, the Foundations of Reading (FORT). Perhaps this forensic thread offers a […]
Karen Vaites: Stellar essay by @cafeteria_duty, published by @HKorbey, on the emergence of “test-free” schools as a quality marker in progressive communities – paired with incurious attitudes about school performance. I had a similar conversation with a pair of Brooklyn friends. They were asking me for advice on finding a school for their Kinder-age son. […]
Ray Carter The results of nationwide testing show that students in Oklahoma lag behind students in nearly all of the 50 states when it comes to reading proficiency. Those results represent more than hardship for individual students or a loss of bragging rights for state officials. According to experts, Oklahoma’s low reading outcomes also translate […]
Mariam Mahmoud Nestled in a café-bar-museum-event space in Fort Mason — San Francisco’s water-front, weathered military campus with sweeping views of the Golden Gate Bridge —is a floor to ceiling library housing the Long Now Foundation’s Manual for Civilisation. A crowd-curated collection of the 3,500 books “most essential to sustain or rebuild a civilisation,” the Manual for Civilisation began […]
Quinton Klabon summary NEW DPI 2023 TEACHER REPORT —— Underly: “I support Eliminating the Foundations of Reading (FORT)” Teacher Test
Kayla Huynh: The McKenzie Foundation and the Boys & Girls Club will instead develop workforce programs for the school district “that combine academic rigor and workforce development,” McKenzie said in the statement. “By leveraging each organization’s unique strengths and resources, we can better serve students and provide them with the skills they need to succeed,” […]
Dave Cieslewicz: If you ever wonder what people mean when they use the phrase “word salad”, here’s what they mean: “There is a predatory dynamic of coming into a district like ours and saying that you are going to resolve something as deep-rooted as racialized inequity through a school that pairs young people with professional […]
Steven Greenhut: Insurance is the foundation of homeownership and the economy, but California leaders have dilly-dallied in the face of a long-running crisis The American Spectator might not be at the top of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s reading list, but had it been, he would have known that California’s teetering insurance system was just one particularly bad wildfire […]
: Education consultant Brittany Kinser, who told WisPolitics last week she had decided against a run for state superintendent, reversed course and has filed to run for the office this spring. Kinser, who describes herself as a “Blue Dog Democrat,” declined to comment further to WisPolitics yesterday in light of a school shooting in Madison. […]
Pamela Snow: There’s no such thing as a quiet year in education, but 2024 has been a notably non-quiet year, especially for reading instruction in the state of Victoria, Australia. On June 13, the Victorian Deputy Premier and Minister for Education, the Hon. Ben Carroll MP released a media statement signalling a new direction of travel for Victorian […]
IRG Senior Research Director Quinton Klabon: The Joint Committee on Finance was forced to dispute the actions of the Department of Public Instruction once again on critical Act 20 reading reforms. The Institute for Reforming Government calls for DPI to follow the law as written so Wisconsin can catch up to leading literacy states. What […]
Anna Stokke Imagine hiring a piano teacher who can’t play the piano or a swimming instructor who’s terrified of water. While it’s clear that these examples are absurd, the Manitoba government seems to have missed the obvious: teachers can’t teach what they don’t know. Last week, Manitoba quietly announced significant changes to teacher certification. Manitobans […]
Kayla Huynh: “We are spending more revenue than we have to spend,” Superintendent Joe Gothard said. “We have a lot of work to do. Regardless of the outcome next Tuesday, we have to have some strategic direction moving forward.” “We need to be sustainable. There’s no doubt about this,” he added. “It’s frustrating to have […]
Caroline Alphonso: “If teachers know only 60 per cent of the correct responses, then they can only teach with 60 per cent accuracy to their students at best. So, it clearly does have impacts,” he said. “It also tells us, across the faculties, that whatever we’re doing, we’re not quite doing enough,” he added. “We […]
Shai Goldman: An unexpected realization dawned on me toward the end of my first semester at Columbia University. For months, I had been noticing certain oddities in seminar discussions, especially in my core literature class. Sporadically, a fellow student would make a stray, weird comment—confusing one central character with another, or misunderstanding key moments in […]
Quinton Klabon: —— Commentary. MTEL and the Foundations of Reading —— Madison taxpayers of long supported far above average K – 12 spending. The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic” My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results […]
Alan Borsuk: Before the 2012 changes in cut scores, Wisconsin was regarded by some national education experts as having some of the lowest bars in the country for defining students as proficient or advanced. For example, the percentages of Wisconsin students who were categorized as proficient in reading and math, using the state’s definitions, were […]
Christopher Ingraham: Despite the emphasis, student achievement in Minnesota has been lagging for much of the past decade. While students in all states have struggled in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and its disruptions of classroom instruction, test scores in Minnesota have fallen more sharply here than in the rest of the country. “There […]
Paris Schutz The Chicago Teachers Union Foundation is seeking to significantly reduce the property tax bill for its West Loop headquarters, according to documents from the Cook County Assessor’s Office obtained by FOX 32 Chicago. The Assessor recently reappraised the value of the CTU’s building, estimating its fair market value at $19 million. However, the CTU is […]
Jeremy Wall When Rya Mousavi saw a poster for Wisconsin’s first civics bee, she had an idea. “My teacher just had a poster on the board and I talked to her about it. She kind of introduced me to the civics bee and I thought it was a good opportunity,” said Mousavi An opportunity to […]
Barbara Dittrich Representative Barbara Dittrich (R – Oconomowoc) issued the following statement regarding the MPS fiscal scandal and its impact on local school districts: “Aside from the fact that the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) and Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) leadership have deceived the public and hurt some of Wisconsin’s most underprivileged students, there is […]
Kaleem Caire One City Preschool continues to attract far more children than we can enroll, and is ready to grow and expand. Our two public charter schools, One City Elementary School and One City Preparatory Academy, are making notable progress as well: In July 2025, we will host our 10th anniversary celebration and first 8th […]
Molly Beck, Rory Linnane And Kelly Meyerhofer The review proposed by Evers would be funded through federal dollars allocated for MPS but yet used or funding leftover from previously awarded contracts, according to the governor. The audits would produce “a comprehensive review and evaluation of the district’s systems, processes, and procedures to identify areas for improvement,” and […]
WILL: The News: The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) strongly condemns the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) for changing the terminology regarding student performance as well as once again considering changing the cut points for proficiency on the state’s Forward Exam. This represents a blatant effort to conceal lackluster academic performance for Wisconsin students. […]
Quinton Klabon: Dean Haddix will oversee science of reading rollout at UW-Madison. Her literacy research focused elsewhere, but the group of which she was president wrote a nuanced defense of balanced literacy and called out UW’s Mark Seidenberg. How does she feel? —- DPI Superintendent Underly: “I support Eliminating the Foundations of Reading (FORT)” Teacher Test […]
Quinton Klabon: Good news! DPI fixed Milwaukee Public Schools! No, I don’t mean MPS’ finance crisis. The Forward Exam categories were OFFENSIVE.YUCKY: Below Basic, Basic, Proficient, AdvancedHAPPY: Developing, Approaching, Meeting, Advanced So, 68% of Black students are Developing. ✨ Will Flanders Changing terms for student performance on the Forward Exam will only serve to cloud […]
Will Flanders: The person put in charge of implementing the Science of Reading in Wisconsin apparently wrote positively about Lucy Calkins. More. Quinton Klabon: GENUINE QUESTION: She was the 2017 president of the Wisconsin State Reading Association, which lobbied against Act 20 in 2023! Many know her, so can someone explain? DPI Superintendent Underly: “I […]
Quinton Klabon Nancy Carlsson-Paige, former Lesley University education professor/Matt Damon’s mom from that 1 Reason video: “I could barely stand [Sold A Story]…full of false information, misconceptions, and distortions of 3-cueing. She didn’t even understand it.” More from Dr. Tim Slekar: Mary Kate McCoy: We’re concerned about equity in education. You will never achieve equity […]
Michael S. Garet, Kerstin Carlson Le Floch, Daniel Hubbard, Joanne Carminucci and Barbara Goodson:
Abbey Machtig So far, feedback on the referendums has been mixed, with some residents supporting funding operational costs and smaller building renovations. But district administrators said others were unsure about the feasibility and cost of a 20-year referendum. About 60% of survey respondents said supporting the district to invest in a 20-year facilities referendum was either a […]
Mitchell Schmidt: The Legislature argues Act 20 is the mechanism that empowers the state’s GOP-controlled budget committee to directly fund the literacy programs with dollars already approved in the state’s biennial budget, which Evers signed last summer. The committee has not yet allocated the $50 million in state funds. “Act 100, as passed by the […]
Jessica Gould: But since announcing an overhaul of readinginstruction and implementing new curricula in half of all elementary schools last September, the city education department has declined to release data from seasonal assessments, called “screeners,” saying it would be premature. Gothamist has now obtained preliminary screener data shared with some public school educators that shows stubbornly […]
Abbey Machtig: Still, at least once major American leader of the balanced literacy movement, Lucy Calkins, has rolled out changes to her reading curriculum under pressure from the science of reading movement. And initial test scores from around the country show this science of reading model seems to be working. Mississippi was one of the […]
Lucy Caulkins: Your Feb. 29 cover story, “When Kids Can’t Read,” references Springfield public schools and my curriculum, Units of Study. I applaud Springfield for attending to the individual differences among children as readers. It is fundamentally important to recognize that children are all different. Assessments from reading specialists and individualized support for those who need […]
Danielle Duclos With low reading proficiency scores across the state, USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin is exploring the causes and consequences of low literacy. This article is part of the By the Book series, which examines reading curriculum, instructional methods and solutions in K-12 education to answer the questions: Why do so many Wisconsin kids struggle to […]
Linda Carnine, Susie Andrist, and Jerry Silbert Project Follow Through was probably the largest study of educational interventions that was ever conducted, either in the United States or elsewhere. While it is now largely forgotten, at the time it embodied many of the hopes and ideals of those who wanted a more just and equitable […]
Karen Vaites: In recent weeks, we’ve wondered which curriculum list would prevail in Wisconsin. Would it be the list proposed by the expert Early Literacy Curriculum Council (four programs, widely acclaimed in the literacy community) or the list proposed by Wisconsin DPI (eleven curricula, the top-rated programs on the increasingly-under-fireEdReports review site), which DPI’s own staff characterized as […]
Quinton Klabon: Joint Finance Committee REJECTS the curriculum lists presented to them. ——- Legislation and Reading: The Wisconsin Experience 2004- Underly and our long term disastrous reading results…. WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators Legislation and Reading: The Wisconsin Experience 2004- “Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, […]
Dave Cieslewicz: A few weeks ago I wrote about a study that showed that Madison public schools are underperforming both state and national averages for math scores. And while everyone is bouncing back a bit after COVID, Madison students’ improvement has severely lagged. Now comes a Wisconsin State Journal report on absenteeism. It’s bad everywhere but again worse in […]
David Wahlberg: The Monona Grove School Board candidate forum will be from 1 to 2:30 p.m. Four candidates are running for three three-year terms. They are incumbents Eric Hartz and Philip Haven, and challengers Katie Moureau and Janice Stone. Legislation and Reading: The Wisconsin Experience 2004- Underly and our long term disastrous reading results…. WEAC: $1.57 million for Four […]
Abbey Machtig: Board members and administration, however, have begun talking more seriously about adding referendum questions to the November ballot to help remedy the financial uncertainty. If the district moves forward with referendums and voters approve the measures, local property taxes will increase beyond the levy limits set by the state. This proposal from the […]
Years ago, a former Madison Superintendent lamented the lack of business community substantive engagement in our well funded k-12 system. Has anything changed? 2024 brings another year of uncontested Madison School board elections. Madison has another new Superintendent – Joe Gothard– due to start soon. Meanwhile: A scorecard. More on Madison’s well funded K-12 system. Accountability? […]
Abbey Machtig and Dean Mosiman: the district had to pull $28 million from its general education fund to cover the extra expenses. The city, which has a growing population and a $405.4 million general fund operating budget for 2024, and the school district, which has a $591 million budget for the 2023-24 school year, both […]
David Blaska: Public school bureaucrats talk in a code all their own. According to Abbey Machtig’s excellent account in the Wisconsin State Journal, Gothard promises courses in “critical ethnic studies.” Sounds like emulating higher education’s various grievance studies, which is what got us into this mess in the first place. Teaching victimhood excuses and perpetuates failure. Gothard is quoted […]
Kayla Huynh In his new role, Gothard will oversee the second largest school district in Wisconsin, which serves over 26,000 students in 52 schools and has a nearly $600 million annual budget. He’ll take over at a challenging time, with COVID-19 federal funding set to expire and the board determining the 2024-25 budget. Gothard will […]
Karen Vaites: All eyes have been on Wisconsin, where politics threaten to stall promising curriculum improvement efforts. The Badger State’s Act 20 literacy bill was one of the bright spots in a flourishing national legislative phase. The bill had a refreshing focus on all aspects of literacy, and recognized the importance of curriculum in fostering change. Act 20 called […]
Jenny Warner: Last week, Wisconsin’s expert Early Literacy Curriculum Council recommended the highest-quality list we have seen from any state. Then @WisconsinDPI tried to overrule them, for no sound reason. More. The nine-member Early Literacy Curriculum Council reviewed and recommended four curriculums. The council includes six members chosen by the Republican majority leaders of the […]
AJ Bayatpour As MPS (Milwaukee Public Schools) asks taxpayers for $252 million in April, I asked Supt. Keith Posley about national testing data (NAEP) that show Milwaukee 4th graders have been scoring worse than the average big city district for more than a decade. —- and: For reference, 10 points is about the equivalent for […]
For those of you watching the state curriculum list developments in Wisconsin… @WisconsinDPI‘s team just sent an eye-opening email to regional teams. Why is @DrJillUnderly‘s team proposing a list of programs that meet requirements “at a minimal level”? cc: @SenMarklein… pic.twitter.com/7umc3Efm6m — Karen Vaites (@karenvaites) February 20, 2024 Quinton Klabon: “DPI is recommending all…instructional materials […]
Danielle DuClos In Wisconsin, at least 79% of school districts surveyed by the Department of Public Instruction use curriculums that don’t meet academic standards recommended by the department. Many teacher preparation programs aren’t embracing this science to help new educators learn to teach reading either. Are you an elementary school teacher whose students are having […]
Abigail Leavins: Monica Santana Rosen, the CEO of the Alma Advisory Group, which consulted on the superintendent search, explained why the board thought it was important to provide a platform for students, in particular, to ask questions of the candidates, but she did not answer why additional panels were not made available to the public. […]
David Blaska: Someone tell the Madison public schools we need more global warming, not less. The school district is planning to hit up taxpayers for $1 billion — one Billion with a capital B dollars — in referenda over the next 20 years to go carbon neutral. MMSD can’t teach or keep young Javon safe […]
Chris Rickert: Math achievement did not necessarily line up with per-pupil spending in Dane County and Wisconsin’s largest districts. Madison spent the most, for example, of the 10 county districts included in the analysis, or $18,896 per pupil in the 2021-22 school year, according to data from the state Department of Public Instruction. Among the […]
WILL: The Assembly is currently considering AB900—a bill that would “decouple” public school spending from spending on the voucher and independent charter school programs. While the concept likely sounds quite confusing, it’s actually relatively straightforward, and will benefit public schools, taxpayers, and choice schools as well. We’ll explain how below. PUBLIC SCHOOLS Currently, when a student […]
Rich Kremer: The Wisconsin Association of School Boards, the Wisconsin Educational Association Council teachers union and Wisconsin State Reading Association have registered against the bill. The Wisconsin Child Care Administrators Association and the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association have registered in support. Wisconsin Early Childhood Association Co-Director Paula Drew told legislators that while the organization “acknowledges […]
Catrin Wigfall: There is no doubt that the 2023 legislative session was “transformational.” I have written here about the numerous new education mandates that the DFL-controlled legislature passed and what they mean for Minnesota students, families, and educators. But there were also things removed — such as the goal to support third-grade students in achieving grade-level literacy. […]
Lauren Gilbert: In a discrete choice experiment in which bureaucrats in education were asked to make trade-offs between foundational literacy, completion of secondary school, and formation of dutiful citizens, respondents valued dutiful citizens 50% more than literate ones. For many policy makers, the goal is not the production of knowledge, but the fostering of nationalism. This may […]
Abbey Machtig: The community will be able to hear from the three finalists for Madison School District superintendent in a series of public interviews this week. Yvonne Stokes, Mohammed Choudhury and Joe Gothard will be interviewed in person by two panels on Tuesday. The public can watch the interviews through a livestream. The livestream can […]
Austin Browne: Massachusetts will no longer require a college degree for a large majority of government jobs due to a new state executive order intended to make the commonwealth more “inclusive.” Governor Maura Healey signed the order, titled “Instituting Skill-Based Hiring Practices,” on Jan 25. The document asserts that “skills-based hiring practices will strengthen the […]
Abbey Machtig: The candidates will be interviewed again Wednesday, but those discussions will not be livestreamed, recorded or open to the public. The interviews will involve teachers, district leaders, students and selected community members. Eric Murphy: Choudhury is one of three finalists for superintendent in Madison, along with Joe Gothard, the superintendent of Saint Paul […]
Dave Cieslewicz: Notice what’s missing? There’s nothing in there about a track record of actually improving, you know, education. Nothing about a record of improving test scores. That’s concerning because MMSD’s record in that regard is not good. This morning the New York Times ran a story that allowed readers to check on how their district […]
George Leef: Among the many destructive ideas that “progressive” thinking has unleashed on education in America is that it’s unfair to hold students from “underrepresented groups” to the same standards as others. Schools and colleges should “help” minority students succeed by lowering expectations for them—somehow atoning for wrongs done to their ancestors in the distant […]
Gavin Escott: The search is underway for a new dean of the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education after Diana Hess stepped down as the head of one of the nation’s highest-ranked education schools. Hess, who served as the dean of the School of Education since 2015, announced in October she would be leaving her […]
Cory Doctorow gave the annual Marshall McLuhan lecture at the Transmediale festival in Berlin We’re all living through the enshittocene, a great enshittening, in which the services that matter to us, that we rely on, are turning into giant piles of shit. It’s frustrating. It’s demoralizing. It’s even terrifying. I think that the enshittification framework […]
Kayla Huynh: The Madison Metropolitan School District has named two former education administrators and one current administrator as finalists to be the next superintendent. Two of the finalists left their former jobs after facing criticism for their performance. The finalists are Mohammed Choudhury, the former state superintendent of schools at the Maryland Department of Education; […]
Kayla Huynh: The Madison Metropolitan School District has named two former education administrators and one current administrator as finalists to be the next superintendent. Two of the finalists left their former jobs after facing criticism for their performance. The finalists are Mohammed Choudhury, the former state superintendent of schools at the Maryland Department of Education; […]
WILL: WILL Client, Kristi Koschkee, stated, “Act 10 is pro-taxpayer and pro-freedom. This legislation provides public employees like me the freedom to not participate in unionization, or be compelled to finance or support political speech I do not agree with. It’s critical that we stand up for this law and not undo the years of […]
Esther Dyson: People worried about AI taking their jobs are competing with a myth. Instead, people should train themselves to be better humans. We should automate routine tasks and use the money and time saved to allow humans to do more meaningful work, especially helping parents raise healthier, more engaged children. We should know enough […]
Sabrina Escobar: “To attract Gen Zers, Chipotle is rolling out a plan that helps workers pay off student loans while saving for retirement, a debit card to help them build credit, and broader access to mental-health resources and financial education. Chipotle noted that Gen-Zers “are experiencing notable financial challenges,” from credit-card debt to “not feel[ing] […]
Quinton Klabon: APPROVED FOR DPI & LEGISLATURE Amplify: Core Knowledge Great Minds: Wit And Wisdom AND Really Great Reading NOT APPROVED, WILL BE DISCUSSED MORE Benchmark: Advance Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: Into McGraw Hill: Wonders REJECTED Savvas: MyView Zaner-Bloser: Superkids —— Legislation and Reading: The Wisconsin Experience 2004- Underly and our long term disastrous reading results…. WEAC: […]
Will Flanders: It’s an unfortunate reality that demographic factors historically play a large role in student performance; any honest assessment of how schools and school sectors are performing must take those factors into account. Much of the reporting on school performance, though, ignores this reality. This report endeavors to incorporate these factors through rigorous statistical […]
Myra Adams: 1. Uncontrollable U.S. Debt: The U.S. Debt Clock displays the inevitability of American decline — a “ticking time bomb” of data and financial evidence — especially the following three. The U.S. government’s total unfunded liabilities — the combined amount of payments promised without funds to recipients of Social Security, Medicare, federal employee pensions, veterans’ benefits and […]
Abbey Machtig: The pandemic significantly affected the projects. Not only did it exacerbate inflation and supply chain delays, but it also altered the scope of work by bringing new needs to attention — such as improving HVAC systems and ventilation and getting rid of environmental hazards such as asbestos in the old school buildings. These […]
IMPORTANT ACT 20 LITERACY UPDATE TODAY, council MAY soft-approve first batch of reading curriculum. (DPI and legislature must agree.) District/charter/voucher that pick them get partially reimbursed. If not, they pay for new Themselves. NOT recorded, so follow this thread! — Quinton Klabon (@GhaleonQ) January 12, 2024 Legislation and Reading: The Wisconsin Experience 2004- —- Underly […]
Kayla Huynh: The 2024 Madison School Board election cycle will include both incumbents running for re-election unchallenged. Candidates for the board began circulating nomination papers and gathering the required signatures in December. Incumbents Maia Pearson and Savion Castro were the only two to submit those papers by the Jan. 2 deadline, according to Ian Folger, […]
James Lister: The Madison School Board needs to take a hard look at the lessons of the last 10 years. The general functioning and the overall management of the school district have been poor and unprofessional. If you call the central offices, you seldom get ahold of a person or get a call back. Teachers […]
Michael R Ford and Fredrik O Andersson In this article, 25 years of data are utilized from nonprofit schools operating in the United States’ oldest and largest private school voucher program to test theories of isomorphism. We find that startup and religious schools belonging to an umbrella organization such as an archdiocese are particularly likely […]
David Leonhardt: Now, though, a growing number of experts and university administrators wonder whether the switch has been a mistake. Research has increasingly shown that standardized test scores contain real information, helping to predict college grades, chances of graduation and post-college success. Test scores are more reliable than high school grades, partly because of grade inflation […]
Dave Cieslewicz: Anyone hoping for improvement in Madison’s public schools will need to keep waiting. Incumbent school board members Savion Castro and Maia Pearson will be reelected by default in April as no challengers showed up before the filing deadline yesterday. Sincere congratulations to Castro and Pearson. They’ve stepped up. They put their names on […]
Molly Beck: Gov. Tony Evers says he opposes abolishing the state’s oldest school voucher program through a lawsuit filed by some of the governor’s strongest supporters. Evers, a former state superintendent and public school educator, said eliminating the taxpayer-funded voucher system in Milwaukee could have “traumatic” effects on the nearly 30,000 students who attend more […]
Dr Kevin Roberts: Twenty years ago, when I was hiring teachers for the private K-12 school I founded, I knew better than to recruit certified teachers. That’s right—I didn’t want to hire certified teachers. Why? Because from my previous work as a college history professor, I knew that the people least prepared to teach a […]
Abbey Machtig: “You have to manage the expectations, the emotions, the fears of ‘is my child making the right progress’ — that is the question I think we hear families ask the most,” she said. Students and parents also may worry that grades won’t translate on applications to colleges, jobs or other opportunities after high school. […]
Abbey Machtig: The Madison School Board is scheduled to hire a new superintendent by February or March. The board began interviewing candidates in closed meetings this month and will continue into January. The board is expected to announce two or three finalists and hold open interviews where the public can participate. The new superintendent will eventually replace […]
Mackenzie Krumme In her 2023 State of Education Address, the head of the Department of Public Instruction said schools are undergoing significant change. We speak with Superintendent Jill Underly on issues facing Wisconsin’s schools in the past year and look ahead to 2024. Underly and our long term disastrous reading results…. WEAC: $1.57 million for Four […]
Paul Mirengoff: Yesterday, Ted Leonsis, owner of the Washington Wizards (NBA) and the Washington Capitals (NHL), announced that he has reached a non-binding agreement under which both teams would move to Alexandria, Virginia. Gov. Glenn Youngkin appeared with Leonsis to tout the relocation, for which the Commonwealth will make a major financial commitment. The original owner of […]
David Blaska: Madison school board members Savion Castro and Maia Pearson are seeking re-election in April. They are thoroughly Woke. Get 100 signatures to get on the ballot. Nomination papers are not due until January 3. The forms candidates need can be found here even though, strangely, the city’s website has not been updated! Blaska’s […]
By Dale Chu The latest PISA results dropped earlier today and, perhaps to no one’s surprise, they weren’t good. U.S. students saw a 13-point drop in math, which was “among the lowest ever measured by PISA in mathematics” for the U.S., according to the OECD. This morning’s headlines summarize the bad news: “U.S. students’ math scores plunge […]
Bob Peterson Establishing two school systems — one public and one private, yet both supported with tax dollars — only expands the ability of private schools to pick and choose the most desirable students Supporters of Wisconsin’s voucher schools make it seem that the schools are just one of many variations of our public schools. Don’t be fooled. Voucher […]